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The setting of this book is Galicia, beginning with Austrian rule and ending with the author’s flight from Poland in 1939, at the start of WWII. By this means, the author managed to escape the soon-to-be German-made Holocaust.

Much has been written about prewar Polish boycotts of Jewish merchants, but very little about the other side of the coin. Jewish merchants had banded together to maintain their age-old economic hegemony, engaging in what is now called Jewish ethnic solidarity. Piotr Kosobudzki, a glazier by profession, noted how the Jewish glaziers at Lodz and Dobra had united to (unsuccessfully) drive the newcomer Polish glaziers out of business. (pp. 20-21). Where Jews saw anti-Semitism and discrimination, Poles saw emancipation from Jewish economic dominance: "...the Endeks encouraged Poles to wrest commerce out of the hands of the Jews. More and more Poles began opening shops, and more and more Poles began earning bread and favorable living conditions." (p. 22).
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This British author's understanding of Jews is quite different from that of westerners [review based on the original 1906 edition], and she points out that her conclusions are supported by eight years' residence in Russian-ruled central Poland. (see the Preface).
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The main author, Jewish historian Emmanuel Ringelblum, had been a member Poalei Zion Left—which was somewhere between Communist-lite and Communist. One of the editors, Shmuel Krakowski, was a long-term Jewish Communist in Soviet-ruled Poland. For these reasons, the reader should be cautious in trusting the information presented in this book, especially when it touches on Polish conduct during the Holocaust.
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